JAFFNA, 29 April 2010 (IRIN) – Sri Lankan Muslims displaced during the country’s decades-long civil war are slowly returning home, but the challenge of reconciling with their Tamil neighbours, and their past, remains.

About 75,000 Muslims were evicted in October 1990 from the northern districts of Jaffna, Mannar, Kilinochchi, Mullaithivu and some parts of Vavuniya by the now-defeated Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who were fighting for an independent Tamil homeland. (more…)

PUTTALAM, 22 March 2010 (IRIN) – Resettlement efforts are under way for thousands of displaced Muslims from Sri Lanka’s north who have been languishing in refugee camps for nearly two decades, officials say. (more…)

Masked gunmen forced a group of eight Muslim preachers, most of them from Pakistan, out of a mosque in the Somali town of Gaalkacyo at dawn prayers on Wednesday and shot them. Five Pakistanis and a Somali died on the spot, and two Pakistanis were seriously wounded, residents and witnesses said.

It was not clear why the Pakistanis had been singled out at the Tawfiq mosque in Gaalkacyo — almost 400 miles northeast of Mogadishu, the capital — or what they were doing in Somalia. Residents said the town had been on a high security alert after earlier unrest.